making over our alien heritage

October, 2074, Orion is 42 years old, Violet is 41, Dallas is 11, Delphie and Dakota are 5, pet dog is Sheba.

The very complicated Deppiesse family first became complicated when Eliza (Brant) Deppiesse divorced her two-timing crook of a husband Kent. Their marriage resulted in one child, Claire.

Orion Deppiesse is the second Deppiesse child, and though Kent would go on to marry his mistress, Felicia, who would later become Brooke and Cabe's mother, Orion's birth came from more otherworldly means...

42 years ago, Kent Deppiesse went out stargazing, and came inside many hours later complaining to his second wife Felicia of a stomach ache. Three days later a little boy was born, and Kent named him Orion. Felicia didn't know what to believe about Orion's origins, though she was there to see him born, and no one else would ever believe Kent about what he thought happened that night. After all, alien sightings in Lakeside Heights were almost unheard of, and a man coming back pregnant and bearing a child? Preposterous!

Little Orion's condition was diagnosed as a skin pigmentation disorder, and left at that.

While Orion was just a boy, Kent was involved with some shady business and was sent to prison on a 20 year term, where considering his advanced age, he never returned alive.

Orion always felt like an outcast - his older sister Claire lived with her mom, and his step-mother Felicia, now a single mother to two toddlers as well, never accepted Orion as one of her own. He was tormented in high school for his flat nose and big black eyes.

It wasn't until college that a kind surgeon offered Orion a highly experimental facial reconstruction. Considering the nature of people, and that entire groups of people called Townie Fuglies were being killed just for looking freakishly different, Orion jumped at the chance to fit in. It was also then that he met a kind-hearted girl named Violet who loved him despite his avocado-colored skin.

All that is behind him now. Orion has a beautiful, talented wife, three brilliant children, and with advances in medical science, he has had treatments to lighten his skin from avocado-green to a human-ish, even if sickly, pale color.

Violet is a novelist whose debut novel, The City, was called one of the darkest and most poignant works of a generation. She is now working on her second novel, and writes book reviews for a day job.

Orion, after graduating at the top of his class somehow got into gaming. He never really knew what he wanted to do, but just enjoyed learning about everything. It paid well, so that’s what he did. Though he would really like to take a stab at the mechanics of programming a game. Violet just wants to know when he will get that noisy hideous contraption out of her living room?

Dallas gets spectacular grades, and is a truly sweet and brilliant boy. He grows up well, thankfully inheriting most of his mother's features, and he is now old enough to get that nose taken care of with his parents’ permission. Orion agrees, after all, he had the surgery as a young man as well. They take out a loan to cover the $5000 for whole nose reconstructive surgery.

Everyone is pleased with the results.

In the six years between Dallas and his sisters, medical breakthroughs (1, 2, 3) have solved this problem so that descendants of alien children will never have to struggle through such decisions again. But we still must ask ourselves, should the descendants of alien children even have to reconstruct their noses, plump their lips, and wear contacts over their black beady eyes?

Dallas is happy with his new human nose, but the fact remains that he still has one grandfather named Kent, and another named Pollination Technician, and though no one could ever guess, his heritage is there. Be proud, young Dallas, be proud.